Media narratives, agonistic deliberation, and Skam: An analysis of how young people communicate in digital spaces

Media literacy facilitates young people’s participation in democratic life. For example, critical thinking skills enhance their ability to understand and interact with media in their everyday lives. This and other capacities – such as problem-solving, research skills, creativity, collaboration, and exercising skills for working within social networks and negotiating across cultural differences – allow youth to engage in public life (Jenkins et al., 2009). The key goal of our study is to provide research-based understanding of the different types of approaches that young people use to make sense of and share perceptions or opinions within digital dialogue spaces. In other words, we define media literacy in this article as the ability to adapt to the cultural requirements of participation and meaningful dialogue. This entails that we see young people as active knowledge producers who accommodate to affordances provided by the digital media they use. We focus on how young people’s participation as active knowledge producers requires the appropriation of methods to handle dilemmas and controversies in a pluralistic society. With this study, we contribute to the understanding of young people’s media literacy competencies by examining how two vital scenes in the popular Norwegian youth television series Skam [Shame] address and depict pressing social matters in ways that offer different potential for deliberation. We consider how this is reflected in the reception of these scenes in commentaries on the series blog hosted by the Norwegian public service broadcaster NRK P3.

Drawing on textual-intertextual analysis (Ceccarelli, 2001; Rønlev, 2020), we present and analyse two scenes – aired in 2016 and 2017 respectively – and their related blog commentaries posted on NRK P3. We consider how the participatory format employed in those scenes inspired engagement with key narratives and social issues. By delving into these, we illustrate two ways of engaging young viewers.

With this article, we seek to add to existing literature addressing knowledge gaps pertaining to relations between digital media and civic, democratic, and social participation as dimensions of public spaces. There is a need to explore dynamics through which digital dialogue spaces shape, and are shaped by, cultural activity and media participation. In terms of actors’ participation in digital communication, innovative media studies have already illuminated meaning-making and public participation in digital media production (e.g., Carpentier, 2011) and how social media relate to contemporary media culture (e.g., Fuchs, 2014). In youth media studies, pioneering work has been conducted into how networks support youth creativity (Drotner, 2018; Eleà & Mikos, 2018; Livingstone, 2009). The field of digital humanities has focused on digital archives, computational cultural analytics, textual mining, analysis, and visualisation (e.g., Manovich, 2013), whereas recent co-design studies have explored media innovation and citizenship (e.g., Björgvinsson et al., 2012; Huybrechts et al., 2017). Similarly, important literature that maps transmedia skills of production and consumption among young people emphasises that while young people have content production and social management skills, they may lack the ability to understand ideologies and media representations of stereotypes (Scolari et al., 2018).

While Skam has received much attention in academia, media literacy – especially as it relates to this popular youth series – is underresearched (Duggan, 2020). A series is an interesting format to explore, as serial narratives are seen to offer a “sense of security which is particularly appealing to children whose literacy skills are developing” (Kümmerling-Meibauer, 2017: 171). We begin by presenting an overview of research conducted on Skam before we analyse the two scenes and related blog comments.

Skam was a Norwegian television series produced by the Norwegian public service broadcaster NRK that aired for four seasons between 2015 and 2017. Focusing on the everyday lives of a group of high-school students, the series was designed to appeal to and attract youth, and in particular girls, as a television audience (Sundet, 2020). Skam turned out to be a tremendous success, not least because NRK let the story unfold in real time via social media, in parallel with the weekly television episodes. When NRK conducted a survey after the second season, it discovered that as many as 98 per cent of Norwegian teenagers between the ages of 15 and 19 knew about the series, and more than 67 per cent had watched the show (Sundet, 2020). Gradually, the series went on to attract a substantial international audience.

Being such a unique television phenomenon, Skam has received scholarly interest from several scientific angles. First and foremost, media scholars have analysed and discussed the innovative narrative structure of the show, often in the context of Jenkins’s term “transmedia storytelling” (e.g., Jenkins, 2006). The show’s success is often linked to the way the story unfolded seemingly in real time through updates in social media and short clips on the official Skam blog (Andersen & Linkis, 2019; Bengtsson et al., 2018; Bom, 2018; Duggan, 2020; Lindtner & Dahl, 2019; Pearce, 2017; Rasmussen & Valtysson, 2017; Sundet, 2017, 2020; Sundet & Petersen, 2020). Moreover, studies of the show’s format are sometimes interwoven with fandom studies. Focus group interviews tend to emphasise how the series created a feeling of belonging and taking part in a community (Rasmussen & Valtysson, 2017; Sundet & Petersen, 2020). Lastly, studies of the aesthetics demonstrate how the soundtrack and extensive use of close-ups facilitated identification and empathy with the characters (Dahl & Lindtner, 2018; Jerslev, 2017). Taken together, these studies suggest that the show’s major success should be explained less by the fact that it is about teens and deals with recognisable aspects of the audience’s own lives. Rather, it is the way the show invites the audience to care for its characters combined with the continuous suspense of how the story is going to unfold in social media, and the social aspect of the fan groups, that propels the interest (see, in particular, Lindtner & Dahl, 2019). These findings are supported by several analyses of audience comments on the official Skam blog or in other social media. We review these studies in some more detail, as they provide the closest foundation for our own empirical analysis.

Prøitz and colleagues (2019) analyse users’ comments about an Instagram post that officially declared that the fourth season of Skam would be the final one. Their analysis indicates that the show had positively impacted a lot of viewers’ sense of belonging and hope for the future – very much in line with the intentions of Skam’s production team (Sundet, 2017, 2020). The affective aspects of the user comments are also addressed by Rasmussen and Valtysson (2017), who find that the comments on the Skam blog created a community which affects the individual user’s emotional life and invites them to share these emotions. Krüger and Rustad (2017) interpret this experienced community in light of Winnicott’s (1953/1971, 1986) concept of “transitional objects”, showing how the Skam blog allowed the users to link specific scenes to their individual challenges with coming of age. The comment section works as a relatively safe place to discuss, for example, female sexuality, and according to Krüger and Rustad (2017: 76), one of the success factors is that the show itself “avoids coming across as a top-down, didactic, and ‘preachy’ affair – a trap that public-service-oriented media products for children frequently fall into”.

Some studies have looked specifically into the democratic potential of comments. Lindtner and Dahl (2019) point out that Skam combines elements from soap opera (twists and cliffhangers that encourage continuous discussion) and melodrama (characters learning from their mistakes). Along with the complex characters in the series, this opens up for sound moral debates that make viewers see their own feelings and experiences as examples of more general phenomena. Lindtner and Dahl (2019: 67) claim that this “contributes to an understanding of the conditions for the development of deliberative democracy in modern media societies, insights relevant both for democratic theory and democratic practice”. Similar points are made by the same authors in a chapter that analyses readers’ responses to Isak, one of the main characters, coming out as gay in the third season of the series (Dahl & Lindtner, 2018). Skam is seen as a democratic resource in this instance because it generates an empathic understanding of “the Other”.

Closely related are the didactic possibilities of the series. An edited collection by Lindtner and Skarstein (2018) examines the form, topics, and reception of Skam with reference to how the series could be used as teaching material. In addition to Dahl and Lindtner (2018), we put forward Skarstein’s (2018) analysis of the comment section as an interpretative community. Following Bruner (e.g., 1986), Skarstein distinguishes between two general modes when interpreting a text. One is the syntagmatic way of approaching a narrative, which means being absorbed in the fictional universe and expressing feelings and desires about what is happening or should happen. This kind of “intersubjective closeness” is the most intuitive and everyday way of engaging with narratives. There is, however, also a paradigmatic way of reading where users see the series from more distance and interpret allusions, metaphors, and deeper messages. An important objective in secondary school education is to move students from syntagmatic to paradigmatic reading. According to Skarstein (2018), both these readings occur on the Skam blog, but they rarely mix – they are parallel interpretative communities, and notably the share of paradigmatic comments does not increase across the four seasons. We therefore refer to these readings when discussing and analysing reactions on the Skam blog.

As shown in this section, previous academic literature outlines three main themes: personal development of viewers; didactical potential or educational value of content; and democratic value development. We expand on the last theme in this article by emphasising media literacy and deliberation on pressing social issues.

We analyse two scenes from Skam that were debated in the news media and which were among the most commented upon on the Skam blog for their respective seasons. They first appeared in two video clips on the blog before they – like all the other Skam clips – were assembled into full episodes and transmitted on prime-time television. The first clip was released on Thursday, 16 May 2016 with the title “Trussel” [“Threat”] and received 652 comments (the last registered in 2017) (Andem, 2016). The second clip was released on Friday, 2 June 2017 with the title “Fakker over vennene sine” [“Fucking over one’s friends”] and received 896 comments (the last ones registered in 2018) (Andem, 2017). We have chosen to concentrate specifically on written comments. While we are aware that the use of “likes” is a form of interpassivity, and thereby a means of virtual participation, our purpose is to evaluate how deliberation is affected by the narrative devices employed in the selected clips. Since many of the blog comments are in Norwegian, they have been translated into English, with effort made to ensure that the translations are as true to the original meaning as possible. Given that commenters use anonymous nicknames, thereby ensuring that respective posts cannot be traced back to specific individuals, we deem it ethically acceptable to quote directly from the blog.

Our analysis is inspired by textual-intertextual analysis (Rønlev, 2020). This type of analysis supplements close readings of influential media texts (primary texts) with a mapping of the reception in media forms that provide spaces, such as blogs, where users have the possibility to comment on and discuss influential texts (secondary texts). The concept of text here is understood not in a limited sense as words on a page, but rather as any object that can be “read”. It may therefore encompass forms such as video clips and television series and their different modalities, whether visual or verbal, as presented on different media platforms. However, in our mapping of the rhetorical strategies of the primary texts (the clips), emphasis is placed on the interaction between the main characters in the two scenes, and the way that this interaction may elicit deliberation on social issues addressed in them. We therefore seek to analyse whether different types of narratives require and elicit higher levels of engagement, the extrapolation of more in-depth understanding and meaning-making, as well as the active questioning of elements of rhetorical device.

To this purpose, we find Kent and Taylor’s (2018) conception of dialogue and monologue along opposite ends of a continuum useful. Whereas monologue generates adherence and obedience, dialogue places emphasis on meaning-making, co-creation, and empathetic interactions. Dialogue includes features such as risk (e.g., openness to unanticipated experiences and consequences), mutuality (collaboration with others in a spirit of mutual equality), propinquity (e.g., awareness of the temporal flow of relationships), empathy (confirmation of others, supportiveness, communal orientation), and commitment (e.g., to maintaining open conversation and interpretation of what others say and feel). Persuasion is nevertheless involved in dialogic interactions. Dialogue participants with a history of tension have the potential to influence others and develop a new understanding of each other from the other’s perspective. The dialogic encounter may result in increases in critical reflection skills, perspective-taking, and critical awareness of social issues.

We also draw on the agonistic model of democracy and consider how conflictual interaction may encourage deliberation amongst young people about social issues more effectively than traditional hero-protagonist (moralising) narratives or consensus-seeking dialogues and argumentation (see, e.g., Habermas, 1993). The agonistic model of democracy (Keegan, 2021; Mouffe, 2005) sees conflict and antagonism as constitutive features of the social. A major task of democratic policies, according to Mouffe (2005: 103), is not to eliminate passion from the public sphere “but to mobilize these passions towards democratic design”. Building on Mouffe’s agonistic political theory, Lo (2017) has proposed changes to the use of deliberative discussions in civic education classrooms, for example, by coupling agonism and deliberation to “allow students to draw upon their passionate responses to social injustice” (Keegan, 2021: 17). In this article, we understand deliberation (from the Latin deliberare: consider carefully) as young people’s engagement with media narratives in order to consider and discuss different positions on a social issue. The result of agonistic deliberation is envisioned here as “negotiated action steps to address a social issue” (Keegan, 2021: 17), rather than compromise or consensus.

The conceptions of dialogue referred to above are based on agonistic models developed within political theory or within critical affective literacy in civic education. Furthermore, the understanding of dialogue presented by Kent and Taylor, and theorists that they draw on (e.g., Cissna & Anderson, 1994; Pearson, 1989), is developed within a framework of organisational rhetoric and strategic communication. We find that the characteristics of dialogue the different scholars present can also be used to analyse mediated and representational dialogue (see Richardson, 2010) in television dramas such as Skam. We furthermore find that comments on the Skam blog are suited to evaluating the influence and deliberative potential the two scenes had on the followers of the series. In analysing the reception of the series, we (in addition) draw on the categories of interpretation, engagement, and consumption presented by Skarstein (2018), Andersen and Linkis (2019), and Lindtner and Dahl (2019). Furthermore, we discuss to what extent and how the responses in the comments – elicited by the two scenes – may contribute to a critical and deliberative media literacy among young participants in digital dialogue spaces. We are aware that NRK moderators may have removed some controversial comments. However, according to Lindtner and Dahl (2019), their level of tolerance tended to be high before interfering in the Skam discussions.

Our analysis is conducted along the following levels of interpretation:

We first provide a detailed description of both scenes so that the reader may better understand the textual narratives employed in the comment section on the NRK Skam blog.

As mentioned in the opening section, by taking a media literacy perspective on participation, we see young people as active content producers who adapt and accommodate to affordances provided by the digital media they use. They are frequent users and contributors to social media platforms and are familiar with the freedom and constraints of those formats and genres. They therefore navigate and interpret narratives across platforms and are accustomed to “real-time” communication.

Both clips present the viewer with moments of personal discomfort that require constructive confrontation and conflict resolution with another. However, the narrative devices employed in the two scenes are quite different. The first confrontation takes the form of a monologue where resolution is found in “besting” the other within a legal framework, whereas the second takes the form of a dialogue where resolution is reached through a better understanding of both parties’ positions and perspectives. The first is more informative, the second more deliberative. Both are educational. Both address important social concerns. However, it is the second clip that elicits more paradigmatic discussion and debate on the Skam blog.

Arguably, in comments about the second clip, commenters also demonstrate a higher level of engagement with the content and extrapolate the deeper meanings and implications of that content through social contextualisation and ethical consideration of the central themes. They more actively question elements of rhetorical device, from both the creators of the series as well as other contributors. There is clearly an increase in democratic deliberation in this discussion. As with the script that elicits those responses, in this case dialogue, critical reflection and understanding is the goal, not necessarily the reaching of consensus or common agreement.

The character of unfolding discussions about social issues on a blog is necessarily different from the carefully scripted dialogue appearing in a scene of a television series by a public service broadcaster. The discussions on the blog follow a different logic, with various voices spontaneously engaging with the moral message of the series. What we witness in the discussions about the scene with Sana and Isak is more in line with Mouffe’s (1999) conception of “agonistic pluralism” in the realm of politics than the scripted dialogue in narrative 2. According to Mouffe’s model of agonism, politics aims at “creating unity in a context of conflict and diversity” (Mouffe, 1999: 755). Compromises are part of processes of politics, but they should be seen as “temporary respites in an ongoing confrontation” (Mouffe, 1999: 755).

Parts of the blog discussion of narrative 2 may be seen within this framework. Engaged and affective discussions do not necessarily reconcile differences as much as they display disagreements and conflicts between adversaries, who may continue to struggle with the perspectives of “the Other”, while possibly also reaching an understanding of the other’s views in deeper ways.

Considering how the analysed responses to the Skam scenes are voiced on a blog hosted by a public service broadcaster with popular enlightenment ideals, we may see the function of this dialogue space as partly analogous to that of the aforementioned civic education classrooms (Keegan, 2021; Lo, 2017). The blog provides participants with a space to voice and exchange opinions in ways that may contribute to developing their critical affective literacy skills. This, again, may help participants develop a critical awareness of the role emotions and conflict play in politics – which may empower them to act. The Skam blog can be viewed as an example of a digital space that allows young people to hold on to their passions while participating fruitfully in political discussions.

At this stage, we must acknowledge two reservations in the findings of this study. The first is that we are unable to determine the age of participants commenting on the blog. We cannot claim that all comments are made by young people nor that the more participatory narrative devices employed in the second clip were necessarily better at eliciting paradigmatic media literacy competencies and democratic deliberation within that age group. We can only state that the series was designed with young people in mind, and that previous studies have shown that it was extremely popular with viewers in that group. We can therefore anticipate that many of the commenters are young people. However, the show was undeniably watched by people of all ages, and therefore anyone could contribute to the discussion. Secondly, we acknowledge that there are shortcomings when extrapolating media literacy out of comments or short public documents, as we do not have insight into the context or personal experience or competences of the contributors. We interpret their views based on our own understanding of the texts, and do not know the extent of their knowledge of the content (series), their motivations, or purpose for posting. We do not know if they have even watched the scene or the whole series.

It is also apparent that several comments are responses to earlier comments, and not necessarily based on knowledge of the scene at all. These are merely discussing the discussion, a trait often found in online comments, and that may lead to a kind of monologic interaction instead of dialogue. Also, for this reason, we cannot be certain that the narrative devices employed in the second clip were better at eliciting paradigmatic media literacy competencies and agonistic deliberation leading to an acceptance of the opposing parties’ views. A prerequisite for productive deliberation is that the participants agree on what they discuss, and the notion of media literacy does not only entail technological and transmedia competencies, but also the dialogical skills we mentioned above: risk, mutuality, propinquity, empathy, and commitment. These are therefore skills we must look for when we study media literacy.

Despite these reservations, we are still able to determine that the two clips have generated a sharing of pluralistic views, and therefore contribute to democratic deliberation to some degree. It is clear that narratives where characters engage in dialogue and work towards accepting conflicting philosophies of life in a reasonable and consultative manner through agonistic deliberation seem more effective in eliciting a higher level of media literacy where critical and ethical competencies are more apparent.